Go and carry on 'til the night is gone, and it's time to go.
I swear, if that man weren't twice my size, he'd be dead right now. And to think I would have fucked him were he not disinclined towards the women folk. As it is, he's lucky he remembered so much of what I taught him when we used to spar all those years ago.
So, things had started out well enough. Ran into Tuck, he volunteered himself to show us around, and then I bought his services as a go between for us and the auction we were supposed to pick up our objective at. He suggested a better method, or at least what had sounded better at the time, and we followed his recommendation of meeting with the gentleman in charge of running the auction. Gentleman is the right word to use, oddly enough. I haven't see anyone take such care to behave so prim and proper, but Mr. Beckett Macmillan was the definition of the word gentleman to the letter. Unfortunately, his taste in women very clearly included Noelle, as he could not take his eyes off her for longer than absolutely necessary to hold polite conversation with the rest of us.
The thing that got Tuck his sound ass kicking was that when Beck asked for some form of collateral when we arrived an agreement on how to proceed with our transaction, the big oaf suggested Noelle. Neither I, nor Noelle, wanted to do this, and the whole way out of the place, after somehow getting talked into this stupid idea, both Tom and Enzo were going on and on at me about how we absolutely could not leave her with him. Tuck was chuckling the whole way back to the street, he found the whole situation downright funny. So I worked the group such that everyone else exited the building before I did, Tuck being the one to come out the door just before me.
When I caught him by the shoulder, and laid a punch across his jaw as I spun him to face me, he stopped like a deer in headlights. Spiegel had been right in front of him, and reacted quickly when I tossed Noelle's messenger bag in his direction as Tuck finally responded to my insult. The whole team stepped back, leaving about a six foot radius of space around us, even as strangers on the street filled in between my team to watch. Beck's men, who had seen fit to escort us to the door when we'd left, stood watching, and Spiegel later told me the two had exchanged a bet on which of us would win the fight.
I don't think Tuck realized the beast he was facing down at first. Whenever we'd sparred I had always been light hearted, joking, teasing and mocking the whole time, even if my skill more than made up for the difference between our sizes, and he had never taken me lightly even though we had been anything but serious. Spiegel had seen me in full fighting force before; the little exchange between Kaith and I during the Klingon war had bared my soul and he had admitted to me once, only once, that I had scared him shitless. Still to this day, he will tell the tale and not even so much as hint how scared he'd been. Tom and Enzo had both been left speechless by the time I walked away from Tuck, I know both understood how lethal of a force I am but there is still a shock in seeing someone in that full on battle rage for the first time, especially when that someone is the hot woman they're involved with. Stace was quiet, he was distracted by conversation he'd heard in the crowd during the fight; when asked about it later he thought it was something involving us, but his grasp of the Ferengi language was rough at best.
I am pretty sure that the way I left Tuck after that fight knocked him down more than a few notches in the rungs of his little slum society. As we had finished, I'd had him on his knees, bloody lip and the start of a good black eye blooming. He started to growl up at me, and I could tell he was about to blurt out my connection to the fleet, so I punched him again and spit in his face. I think the blood from my own split lip simply made it look more impressive to our audience. I managed to force myself into a calm voice, and reminded him that if he said what it sounded like he was going to say, I can and would return the favor in kind. Then I suggested he think long and hard in the future, before fucking with anyone I considered to be a friend again.
I don't think he realized how personally I'd taken his suggestion of Noelle being collateral until that moment. I didn't stick around to see what that epiphany did for him, I turned on heel and stalked off. Tom, Enzo, and Spiegel all fell into step behind me without a word, though I had to grab Stace by the elbow due to the conversation that had distracted him during the fight. The crowd parted for me as if by magic, and there was an unsettling silence around us as we left.
Once I'd snapped Stace's attention back to me, he was able to easily lead us to the place Beck had recommended for our money changing. Mentioning his name got us a pretty good rate, and the exchange was quick. Headed back towards Beck, I'd tried picking Stace's brain on whatever it was he'd heard during the fight, but between how little he knew of the language and the noise of the crowd, he had nothing more than fragments and vague references that were just as likely to be about us as they were to be about anyone else. However, what we found upon returning to Beck, made it clear that what Stace had overheard had been about us.
Beck, and his plush office, had been completely trashed. Noelle was nowhere to be seen, and talk of the Andorian, who'd laid money on me in my fight with Tuck, betraying him were what greeted us upon out return. I was seeing red, finding this, so I don't clearly remember what happened. I do know we got the box, and that Beck was as cooperative as he could possibly have been when I proceeded to demand what the hell had happened. I sent Enzo and Stace out to see if they could find out anything from the crowds, and Spiegel, Tom and I brought the box back to the ship.
Oh, yeah, to add insult to injury? All that was in the box was a small container of saf. We're talking about as much as Blue had used on me during the mission on Andor. Why the fuck would Intel have us chasing down saf? I've shot a subspace message to Sharad, a little more elloquently put, but pretty much could be summarized down to that one question. Haven't heard back from him yet. Am also waiting to hear from Beck as to what he can find out about what happened and who has Noelle.